Monday, July 1, 2013

Exploring Facebook for Family History

What social media icon is big, blue, and ubiquitous? Which
one is used for everything from connecting with long-lost high school chums
to keeping up with pics of the grandkids?

The social media site that can be used to find coupons for
your favorite restaurant has become a wonderful outlet for the
give-and-take of inquiring genealogy fanatics.

It’s Facebook: an online spot you’ve no doubt already
accessed for so many uses.

Perhaps it’s in the flood of other uses that we get
distracted from the fact that Facebook can serve as a useful utility for family
history researchers.

Try one test on the search bar at the top of the Facebook page:
enter the term “genealogy”—or try “genealogical”—and see what results
come up.

I’ve searched for interest groups aligning with some of the
locales where I have family history. When I worked on my maternal grandmother’s
roots in Florida, I found a Facebook page, for
instance, on Hillsborough County.

One of my favorite—and, hands-down, most useful—Facebook pages
is the Chicago Genealogy page. It certainly has been a responsive resource in studying my husband’s Stevens, Tully, and Malloy lines in the city’s
history. This is one of those pages where you need to be admitted to
the group, but it is worth the (very simple) effort of submitting a request.

The Chicago Genealogy page provides an almost daily example
of the immediacy of sharing genealogy issues on Facebook. A query posted on the
Chicago Genealogy Page will elicit almost instantly a wide
variety of helpful comments. If you are on Facebook and are researching any
family members from the Chicago
area, I highly recommend that you tap into this group.

Not only are there Facebook pages or groups with a genealogy
slant focused on cities and counties, but there are international items, too.
Take this one example I follow (thanks again to my husband’s Irish heritage):
the page called County Limerick Ireland Genealogy.

If you search on Facebook long enough, you will uncover a
wealth of pages and groups focused on many geographic levels as well as
disciplines. There is even a Facebook group for Social Media for Genealogy.

While some groups are lively, such as the Chicago group I just mentioned, others don’t
have as much activity—but could, if someone like you popped in and posted a
comment or query. Almost like the old genealogy forums, though more immediately
connected via the social media mechanisms, these are opportunities to network
with others on specific research focus areas you are currently addressing in
your own work.

You’d think I would have discovered that using the very
methods I recommended above. But no, do you think this is how I stumbled upon
it? Rather, it was through the recent post of a fellow genealogy blogger, Beverly
McGowan Norman, who shared a list of Facebook pages of other genealogy bloggers
she knows. Here’s her list, posted just this past Saturday in her blog, Roots, Branches, and a Few Nuts.

Why do I mention all this? Because social media in general
provides us with multiple tools to connect with others going down the same
research paths we are—and Facebook is the one social media site the greatest
percentage of us are already utilizing.

Why not add Facebook to our research tool kit—and get a
chance to socialize a bit with the ones we’re meeting along the way?

Unlike on Twitter, with Facebook, we can say a lot more
about our research passion than could ever fit within the confines of those
skimpy 140 character limits.

You can always make it small--make your settings private or limited to family only, for instance. But if you do ever end up yielding to Facebook, Iggy, I imagine all your bloggy friends would be clamoring to connect with you :)

Wow, Jacqi, thanks! I'd love to be on this Facebook list of Genealogy Bloggers. I'd better get on this right away. I've copied your reference URL. I've found it hard to include Facebook, really, in my daily rounds of reading blogs, researching, Twittering, and blogging. But the FB link sounds important. I'm very grateful to you!

It is a challenge to integrate all these social media outlets into a reasonable outreach plan--without usurping all your time (especially the time that should be devoted to writing!). I definitely hear you on that one!

So I just joined about 5 groups on FB, and now I feel sick to my stomach. "The Organized Genealogist" is making me realize I'm not going to live long enough to get organized. "Technology for Genealogy" and "Social Media for Genealogy" - OMG, I barely installed my Feedly Button. I don't think I'm ready for all this. I must be that old dog struggling to learn a new trick.

Ha Ha Wendy! I think Jacqi has us all going to FB today and joining one thing or another, but I'm only sticking my toes in and asked to join only one group for now. I still haven't gotten to the Feedly button. So much prompting from you recently Jacqi. I feel the nudge. I'm trying to adapt!

I manage the Hubbard County Historical Museum Facebook site. Perhaps that is another avenue for y'all. I do get requests for information..unfortunately I do not have enough researchers to keep up with requests..so I do what I can do:) I am going to see if I can find you on Facebook right now. :)

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.